EDVARD MUNCH'S SKRIK (Scream), 1893, without the definite article in Norwegian, is arguably the most famous image left to the world by Norway. He gave it a German title Der Schrei der Natur (The Scream of Nature). He was our greatest painter and his reputation remains and grows.

He created a synthesis of life, pessimistic and deterministic. Livsfrisen (the life frieze), the collection of twenty-two pictures, is seen as a poem of life, death and love, the life of the soul. The frieze centres around eroticism and death; the eternal pictures Skrik, Desire, Jealousy, Vampire and Madonna are found in this series. After Scream he let the Sun in and in other paintings moved away from such melancholy images to a brighter life and lighter landscapes. The central mural in the Aula at the University of Oslo, presents the Sun as the central motif and the lateral panels are called History and Alma Mater. In the treatment of the big and sensitive issues of life he apparently felt close to Henrik Ibsen, his preferred writer and inspiration, and he created outstanding portraits of him sitting in Grand Cafe.

Norwegian painting had a revival in the 1820s beginning with Johan Christian Dahl who was appointed Professor at the Academy of Art in Dresden in 1884. Painters like Thomas Fearnley, Peder Balke, Adolph Tidemand, Hans Gude, Christian Krohg, Lars Hertervig, Frits Thaulow, Erik Werenskiold (cf his outstanding portrait of Henrik Ibsen) and Nikolai Astrup, lead the way for Edvard Munch who had his international breakthrough at the 1892 Berlin exhibition. The abstract and non-figurative painter, Jacob Weidemann, was inspired by Norwegian nature, leaves, moss, heather, branches and stone, as his titles confirm.

In sculpture the outstanding figure is Gustav Vigeland. He worked against the odds because he did not have a Norwegian sculptural tradition to build on. It was a struggle for existence but he believed in his own talent. Like Hamsun he wandered the streets of the capital, and, as he wrote in his notebook, waiting to be discovered, to be declared as a genius - and he was. He ‘stormed at life’ and created The Fountain, The Monolith, The Wheel of Life and the fifty-eight bronze figures and four dragon-groups sited in the Frogner Park in Oslo.